The Duke Freshman Outed As A Porn Performer Explains Herself In An Editorial

Last week, a freshman at Duke was “outed” as having a porn performer alter ego. Rather than let the internet go wild with the information on their own, like it did with the outing of Miss Teen Delaware, an LSU girl, and God only knows how many others (yr mom?), the college Republican and double sociology/women studies major has taken charge of her own SEO to a certain degree, explaining herself in interviews with the Duke Chronicle and an editorial for XOJane. Now, for me, the biggest surprise about this story is that she doesn’t go to Arizona State. My reactions to the news ranged from “Niiice,” and “A freshman? Niiice.” (Barely legal! For real!) But for some, stories like this always turn into a big debate, as if porn’s existence from roughly the dawn of man until now depends on your approval somehow.

But first, the girl, who says she got into the biz because she likes sex and thought it would be a good way to pay for school, in her own words:

The storm began when I came back to school from Christmas break, happy and confident in myself. I was only a week in when I found myself being bombarded by friend requests on Facebook from random male students. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. I was a bit flattered to be honest (maybe I actually am pretty and nice and not awkward, I thought), but then, the unthinkable happened: a student in my grade followed my alter ego on Twitter.

When I got the notification, my heart stopped.

I stood there shaking in disbelief and fear. I knew what was coming next: fear, humiliation, shame, threats, name calling.

What I did not expect was that I would be brutally bullied and harassed online. I did not expect that every private detail about my life would be dissected. I did not expect that my intelligence and work ethic would be questioned and criticized. And I certainly did not expect that extremely personal information concerning my identity and whereabouts would be so carelessly transmitted through college gossip boards. I was called a “slut who needs to learn the consequences of her actions,” a “huge fucking whore,” and, perhaps the most offensive, “a little girl who does not understand her actions.”

Let’s be clear about one thing: I know exactly what I’m doing. What about you? |XOJane|

If I meet an 18 or 19-year-old who knows exactly what he or she is doing, it will be a first. But that’s beside the point. I don’t consider myself a feminist crusader or anything, but I do tend to live by what I would consider a pretty simple rule: If you’re jacking off to someone, if someone’s doing something that gives you boners… BE NICE TO THEM. That seems only logical to me. Otherwise, do you hate your boner or something?

The next question most people ask about porn stars is why they do it, or delve into that. She gets into that a bit:

My entire life, I have, along with millions of other girls, been told that sex is a degrading and shameful act. When I was 5 years old and beginning to discover the wonders of my body, my mother, completely horrified, told me that if I masturbated, my vagina would fall off.

The most striking view I was indoctrinated with was that sex is something women “have,” but that they shouldn’t “give it away” too soon -– as though there’s only so much sex in any one woman, and sex is something she does for a man that necessarily requires losing something of herself, and so she should be really careful who she “gives” it to.

Ahh, yes, I think I recognize this phenomenon. When you turn something into a huge taboo (like sex, or chocolate, or whatever), you tend to fetishize it. Have fun with that, strict parents!

One thing I did notice about this coverage, from DailyBeast to NY Daily News to BroBible to Jezebel, was that no one re-outed her, despite the obvious traffic incentive to do so. Progress?

Canada Post is not particular about which nationality they screw over – although part of the problem is that it sat at US customs for two days. Because it’s full of weapons and drugs. So I guess your dogs had to molest it for a while.

Not to get too academicky about it, but my main problem with any group that assumes oppression on anybody’s behalf is that it takes away agency. Arguing that this woman didn’t know what she was doing is basically a variation on the “false consciousness” argument, which I call bullshit on.

Sometimes people choose to participate in a condition which (apparently) oppresses them. Instead of assuming they’re oppressed, why don’t you ask them why they’re doing it? Or better yet, why doesn’t everyone try leaving each other the fuck alone?

My jackoff couch and I are happy she decided to do porn, just like for every other college freshman. But doing porn anonymously no longer exists, and it is naive to think otherwise. Internets gonna internet and such.

I’m not sure doing porn has been “anonymous” since the 70s, but your point is well taken: it’s not like you’re a call girl, you’re a media performer and OF COURSE your fellow students are going to recognise you.

How can she be in porn and a Republican? She does know that Republicans want to shut down all porn activities right? That would be like me starting a car rental agency and then lobbying to make sure renting cars is illegal. Or maybe she’s into self loathing and punishment. I didn’t look that close, time to do some, um, research.

“Not”…. I should seriously just give up on posting here until they upgrade their comment system to anything better than something that a college student put together in his spare time. Serious, is there even an ETA on an edit button?

Opposing pornography is a bipartisan position. Some religious folks and feminists would like to use obscenity laws to make it illegal. Likewise the more libertarian leaning on the right and ACLU free-speech types on the left want to keep it legal. Of course, most folks are still going to go watch it when nobody is looking.

Putting aside all the debate about empowerment/feminism/whatever, I think the larger issue here is that if she expects to pay her (60,000$ a year!) tuition by doing a few porn scenes she is hilariously mistaken. The last few years have seen a dramatic reduction in the per scene price(1) for girls in porn (she would be very lucky to be getting 1.5k a scene now) AND once her “newness” wears off she will be booked less and less*.

*(Although I guess if she understood economics and supply and demand she wouldn’t be a Womens Studies major.)

I don’t know why the mom would suddenly start spouting off about masturbating if the kid was just like, “Mom, what’s this thing?” But it’s certainly possible she’s very crazy. Either way, I’m not against kids suddenly realizing they have genitals. I used to make mine talk as a young boy.

I follow a lot of addiction medicine and sexual trauma doctor’s podcasts and writings. They never agree on anything except that a kid that is legit masturbating or “playing doctor” with the other kids at this age was molested. Cut to the porn at 18 and you’re repeating the history of trauma. This porn girl has a past that we don’t know about that sent her down this road. It’s a tragedy.

The whole “I just love sex so I got into porn” is a myth. Girls who love sex have a boyfriend or a steady, safe friend with benefits.

Vince, while we’re on the swanky topic of porn: Will you do a follow-up to the Heidi Van Horny story? The actress who wanted to boink 23 dudes on her 23rd birthday. I believe she ended up not doing it (possibly due to the interference of Adolphus Van Horny IV) To which I say: bravo. Good for her.

@Gladys the Groovy Mule – If places like Jezebel, Salon, and their RAPE CULTURE! frothing at the mouth over every issue and non-issue didn’t give 2014 feminists a horrible image, then we wouldn’t have to feel the need to distance ourselves from them to say something as simple as “don’t be a dick towards women in porn”

But the fact is Salon and especially Jezebel has over the past year become the most visible and, for lack of a better term, “popular” representation of feminism in our modern American society. I’m not sure how effective just ignoring them like they don’t exist can be.

Well, I have conflicted feelings about the label. Like, why is there a label? For someone who thinks men and women should have equal rights? Isn’t that just a normal, non-bigoted human being? People who think black people should have equal rights aren’t called ebonists. It’s the bigots who should have the label.

I can criticize her for any number of reasons, but I won’t because she’s 18-19 and doesn’t know anything. I really do just wish her the best because she’s going to need it now. My interest in her goes no further than can I jerk off to her.

What does bother me; what I don’t understand about; what I think Vince only touches on tangentially when he says to be nice to people who give you boners, is that instead of focusing on her I’d just once in my life hope to see people focus on harassing the motherfuckers who make veiled and not-so-veiled rape and death threats just because she’s done porn.

@Vince Mancini The world is a lot more like the Yahoo comment section than the FilmDrunk comment section: it’s very un-normal to think that sex workers should be treated like people. Like Martin said, are we even slightly surprised that people are so casually threatening to rape her?

The word feminism emerged historically. I think saying the label has no relevance nowadays is misguided. At best you’re letting yourself be deluded into thinking there are no more gender related issues, and at worst you’re dismissing all that the movement has done for women of today.

I just don’t think someone can say they’re not a feminist without implying that there’s something wrong with the goals of feminism.

Judging by my research, she seems still really new to the industry. Which means she could probably get a nice little chunk of change to do one of those Lets Try Anal videos that I may or may not have a lot of familiarity with.

1. Her argument that any job that would not want to hire a former porn actress is not one she would want is terrible. I don’t think she realizes it includes nearly every job she’d want to have (incidentally, I saw a casting couch vid where she said she wanted to be a human rights lawyer).

2. Her shock at someone one a college campus recognizing her shows a similar lack of foresight. Of course someone was going to put two and two together at some point, of all places at a fucking frat party.

3. I’ll dispute the person above who didn’t like her work. I think she’s really good. Great body and she really gets into it.

i watched her video. and she did. she really didnt act like she enjoyed getting fucked and taking a shot (like miss teen delaware). she wont last long in porn if she doesnt ‘clean her act up’ by getting alot more dirty.

I adore girls that do porn. Less so the ones that are to stupid to think that in today’s day and age, you can do porn anonymously.
She loves sex…great. She loves the money…awesome. She didn’t want anyone to know that she was doing this…VERY STUPID!!! Especially after feeling like she needed to “justify” to the masses her reasoning, while still trying to remain anonymous ON THE TODAY SHOW!!!
She is not a dumb college girl for doing porn, she is a dumb college girl doing porn that thought she could do it anyone finding out or any social recourse.

***Unless this was her plan to gain more money fame and attention. If that is the case, she is brilliant***